Backstage Pass

by Riley Scott

  Chris laughed easily at the silly faces Raven was making. “I’ll be out in a bit,” she said. “And trust me, I’m ready.”

  As she shut the bathroom door behind her, she heard normal ribbing between Paul and Raven. The two behaved more like brother and sister than co-workers. Looking around the small space that served Raven, Paul, Pete, Joe and now Chris, she figured they probably couldn’t help it. Paul had also alluded to a long history between the two of them. The bus seemed to enhance that connection.

  Enforced bonding was what today was all about. Even though things had been going much more smoothly than Chris had expected, she still needed to get below the surface with Raven. She doubted she would ever reach the depths of the demons that tortured the girl—and after seeing just how hard she could party, Chris wasn’t quite sure she wanted to. But to understand her, to know what made her tick, she need to be let in, at least in some level. Most importantly, she needed to know what capacity Raven had to connect with people, aside from music. If she was going to do this job properly, she needed to present a new Raven of sorts, one who gave back and cared about the world around her, instead of a woman who simply existed to create music and wreak havoc on the general population whenever her tour bus rolled into town.

  Chris brushed her teeth, put in her contact lenses and prepared for the day. Staring in the mirror, she noticed that she had aged a year in just a matter of days. She wasn’t sure if it was the late nights, the partying or the fact that anxiety seemed to have overtaken her every thought today. Sure, she had spent plenty of time in conversation with Raven and she had never been left to fend for herself for too long at any of the parties. On that level, they got along well, but it was merely alcohol-fueled banter.

  Today would be different. It would be a test of sorts and she was anxious about it.

  She took one last deep breath and a long glance in the mirror, silently nodding to herself that she could—and would—do this. She would be successful.

  “If there’s anything in the world you know, it’s people,” she whispered aloud to herself, needing the additional affirmation. She slung her purse over her shoulder and walked outside, gesturing to Raven that she was ready.

  Wordlessly, Raven nodded at her and grabbed her clutch, following Chris out the door. The two walked in sync in comfortable silence, as though they had known each other for years instead of just a week.

  Laughing together they strolled in and out of the small eclectic shops on the square in Santa Fe and stopped occasionally to look at items sold by street vendors.

  “Who would actually wear this?” Chris asked, running her fingers along the edges of one of the shaggy fur vests in a women’s clothing store.

  “My mom would have loved it,” Raven said, letting out a laugh before abruptly shutting her mouth and looking away as if she had misspoken.

  “Oh yeah?” Chris commented, determined to make the moment a breakthrough instead of another opportunity for Raven to put up an impenetrable wall. “Was she into the southwest flair?”

  “Something like that,” Raven said, walking back toward the ceramic section, where a local artisan had handcrafted everything from cowboy boot figurines to coyotes.

  “What does she do?” said Chris, keeping her voice casual.

  “I don’t know,” Raven said with a shrug. “Haven’t known for quite some time.”

  Chris waited in silence, resisting the urge to pry. Raven gently ran her finger along the glass casing, intently interested in the little red and yellow ceramic boot in front of her.

  “What do your parents do?” she finally asked, turning her attention back to Chris. Raven’s forehead crinkled and she leaned closer to hear over the noise of a family of shoppers behind them.

  “My father was successful,” she said, her mind drifting back to how he would return home with his shirtsleeves rolled up and his tie loosened, looking every bit like he had just put in a hard day’s work. “He was a commercial consultant and helped a bunch of people back in Texas grow their businesses. That’s what he did right up until the year he passed away. He closed up shop when he was diagnosed with advanced heart disease. He passed two years ago and it’s been a rough two years. It made me realize I had taken a lot of things for granted with him. I had always been pretty hard on him and thought he should have been more flexible and more understanding. He was the dad who tried too hard to fix my problems instead of just listening. He was the man who demanded perfection when I just wanted to live my life. He wanted me to be just like him and make the choices he’d made. At least, those are the things I thought he was.

  “I was wrong in many ways. He was my biggest supporter, my most ardent cheerleader. He pushed me to be my best because of his solid belief and blind faith in me. He was my steady stream of life advice and the one who always sought out workable solutions. Most of the time he was right. He was a hard worker and a shrewd businessman. I always thought he worked too much. I felt like it took away from the time we had together but after he passed, I realized that he had done it all for me and for our little family. It was just the three of us—him, my mom and me—but he provided for us like it was his only job. Those long hours, the times he went without vacations, all of it. It was all to teach me about hard work and provide me with the best life possible.

  “He was a good man and it’s been a little hard figuring out how to go about life without him. A million times in my own career over the past couple of years, I’ve wished that I could pick up the phone and ask him for advice—even if just to listen to him try to fix it again. His passing left me pretty lost, and that’s probably why I’m here now. I dove right into work and pushed it aside for a while but that gave me a lot of experience. Enough experience to take on an assignment like this one on my own.” She stopped and looked around, aware that she had just crossed a line into too much personal information. “But, that’s the long answer I guess. Sorry for that.”

  Her words had spilled forth without any warning. She cleared her throat to make the onslaught stop. “My mother is a therapist,” she added quickly.

  “Sorry to hear about your dad,” Raven said, biting her lip and looking somewhat uncomfortable with Chris’s emotional display. “I imagine that has been really tough on you. Are you and your mom close?”

  She hated that question, but decided it was easier to invite closer conversation if at least one of them was sharing. “Not really,” she said with a shrug, wishing she could avert the focus from herself as Raven had just done. “She’s in the business of fixing people and thinks that I need fixing. Where my father would have offered solutions, she thinks I’m the problem ninety percent of the time.”

  “Yeah?” Raven asked. “What part of you is so fucked up it needs fixing?”

  “You name it and it probably needs to be fixed,” she said with a laugh.

  “Yeah, well name some of them,” Raven challenged.

  “I’m a lesbian. I’m too messy for her tastes. I’m single. I’m stubborn. I’m too much like my father and though they stayed together, they were never really a pair that meshed. She is all about confrontation and pointing out one’s flaws. He averted conflicts and used humor to make situations more bearable. To her, that meant he wasn’t taking situations seriously. They argued daily and since I’m his little ‘carbon copy’ as she calls me, she and I don’t see eye to eye. I laugh about things she thinks I should see a shrink for. I work too many hours and I also avoid confrontation. But that’s just the stuff that falls into personality traits. I also dye my prematurely-gray hair instead of embracing my aged wisdom. I view all sides of a situation and often change my mind as a result of it all rather than commit to an opinion.” Chris ticked off her “offenses” one by one on her fingers, hoping she had given Raven enough of who she was to allow her to feel comfortable to share as well.

  Chris felt at ease in revealing all of this to Raven. There was a natural companionship between the two of them, making this feel more comfortable than just another work assig
nment. As she finished, she smiled up at Raven. “I think the worst part for her is that I’m happy with who I am and don’t want her to fix me. That’s probably my biggest sin.”

  “Just like a therapist,” Raven said, shaking her head and smiling. The gesture warmed Chris’s heart. It had been too long since someone had listened so willingly and actually had a genuine response, aside from Brittany. Brittany definitely had ulterior motives. Brittany had been there when Chris was her most vulnerable. She made a point to provide everything Chris might need. Chris was never certain if that was a ploy to get closer to her, or if it was simply her nature to be so loving and giving. Regardless, it was what she had done after every breakup and certainly after the death of Chris’s father. It was that tenderness, that willingness to be available at any hour—that and a lot of alcohol—that she had mistaken for romantic intimacy. The interest and kindness displayed by Brittany led Chris to the drunken night they shared—and the confusing nights of lust that followed. That kind of interest had a way of getting her in trouble.

  This felt different—interest from someone who didn’t feel the need to listen in the off chance that Chris might go to bed with her later. After her father’s death, she had lost so many friends because she had pushed them away, opting to work late hours and get lost in the world of climbing ladders instead of downing drinks at happy hours or attending birthday parties and barbecues. After a while, no one reached out anymore and she hadn’t had a romantic relationship that mattered once he got sick, as if getting too close to anyone provided the opportunity to experience even more loss.

  She was self-aware enough to know she was doing it but she had seen little from anyone to make it worth changing. At least until this moment. Now she felt herself opening up with very little reservation. Raven had picked the lock that had kept her sealed away from this type of interaction.

  “Have much experience with therapists yourself?” Chris asked.

  “From afar,” Raven said, shaking her head again. “I’ve never seen one personally, but I was in plenty of rooms with them for a while.”

  Chris cocked her head to the side slightly, leaning in and nonverbally asking for more information.

  “My parents’ messy divorce, a little assault and battery, that whole shebang,” she said, casually waving a hand through the air as if to dismiss it all. “I was the kid in the room who didn’t have to answer too many questions. I heard a bunch though and at the end of it all, I realized that no one person can really fix the problems of another. That’s kind of an inside job.”

  “Inside job,” Chris repeated the words and nodded her head in agreement. “I like that. And you’re absolutely right. I’ve learned that those who work to fix the problems of others often have plenty of their own. But I guess that gives them some insight at least.”

  “Is that why you do what you do?” Raven asked, a smile playing with the corners of her lips as she raised an eyebrow. “You’re here to fix me up, right?”

  “Stop it,” Chris said, jokingly nudging her in the arm, only to stop at the jolt the contact sent through her body. She took a deep breath, composing herself. “You know that’s not why I’m here. I thought we had established that.”

  “We have,” Raven said, throwing her arm around Chris’s neck and leading her out of the shop. “I’m just giving you a hard time. But really, why do you do what you do?”

  “I’m good at it,” Chris said frankly. “I am a crafty writer, a spin doctor and an eternal optimist. I see the good in others, so it’s easier for me to bring that out.” She paused for a moment, eyeing another good shop to keep the day alive. “What about you? Aside from being insanely talented, why do you do what you do?”

  “Same reasons, I guess,” Raven said, pointing with her free hand to an ice cream shop on the corner, never making a movement to remove her arm from its resting place around Chris’s shoulder. Raven seeming so casually comfortable warmed Chris’s heart. “I like to express myself, without having to bare it all, you know? I mean, it’s like I can tell the world what I’m feeling and I can make it real for them, too, for whatever they may be going through. But I don’t have to get so descriptive that it makes it seem less real for them or too real for me. It’s a way of being able to be genuine without being weak and transparent.”

  “Do you think transparency and weakness are synonymous?”

  “I think they can be,” Raven pondered, looking upward as they walked. “They’re not always intertwined, but I think that at the root of being overly transparent is being weak enough to need someone to see all of you—to need all of you and want all of you, regardless of how ugly some of the parts are. I think that we should all be strong enough to keep some of that to ourselves, to find a way to express it a little more vaguely and still be able to cope and realize that some people might not like us.”

  “I’ve never thought of it that way,” Chris said, taking in the words and trying them on for size. “What about you do you consider ugly?”

  “I have horrible morning breath,” Raven said, winking and playing the question off coolly. “I mean, let’s face it, we can’t all be perfect.”

  They laughed with ease and eventually Raven cleared her throat. “I guess I consider the parts ugly that are the parts that keep you employed. You wouldn’t be here if I was palatable to every taste.”

  “But those aren’t fundamentally ugly parts of you,” Chris argued gently. “Those are just parts of you.”

  “Exactly. The same way you accept your mother’s judgments and dismiss them because you’re good with so-called ugly parts, I’m good with the parts of me that not everyone likes. Those things are part of me though. They’re who I am and what I do. Some people think those parts are unacceptable, and that’s why you’re here. I’m okay not being everyone’s cup of tea, but if I’m going to continue to be in the public eye, I suppose I have to be a little more acceptable to some. That’s where you come in, I guess. You make me a little less bristly so parents don’t freak out when their kids come home listening to my music.”

  Chris listened in awe. Just a few days ago, this was the same woman who wanted nothing to do with her, the same woman who would have rather rotted in her own self-righteous anger than take any help from some PR person.

  “How am I doing so far?” Chris asked.

  “There you go with that need to please,” Raven joked, her throaty laugh ringing through the air. “I’m kidding,” she assured her. “You’re doing fine as far as I’m concerned, but I’ve always liked me. I guess the real test would be to ask someone who doesn’t think I’m the greatest thing since sliced bread.”

  “Who would that be?”

  “Probably your mom,” Raven shot back. “Judging from how harshly she throws down judgment on you, I’m pretty sure she’d think I was the devil’s mistress. If you being a conflict-averting, stubborn lesbian puts you on the naughty list, I don’t think there’s a prayer for a wrong-side-of-the-tracks, smoking and drinking, rebel rocker girl like me who’s more at home in a hazy basement, surrounded by empty beer bottles, bumping speakers and half-clad misfits just like me.”

  “She would actually probably like you more than me,” Chris said, carefully eyeing Raven up and down. “You’re a brunette with a sassy mouth. That always seemed to win out over the blondie with an opinion. She has this assistant, Colleen, who has never been afraid to sass my mom. The one time my mom tried to ‘fix’ her, she told my mom where she could shove her quick fix. I’ve actually heard my mom tell Colleen that she considers her a daughter. The fact that she’s the daughter my mom wishes she had is the underlying message and we all know it. I assume you would tell her where to go and she’d love and hate you in equal measure for you. At the end of the day, she would like you though because you don’t mind jumping into confrontation.”

  “Forget about your mother for a while,” Raven said. “Let me buy you an ice cream to pay you for your babysitting duties and we’ll chat about something happier than family dysfunct
ion.”

  “You’ve got a deal,” Chris said, smiling as Raven opened the door and ushered her inside.

  Their conversation came to a lull as they stood in front of the window, a myriad of ice creams displayed behind an old-fashioned glass case. Chris took the moment to watch Raven. She delighted in the way Raven’s eyes flitted from flavor to flavor, her dimple showing as her smile deepened and her forehead creasing as she considered her choice. The sunlight glinted through the window, lighting up the entire establishment. Raven wore a look of childlike joy.

  “What flavor are you going to get?” Raven’s voice was distracted and heavy with uncertainty. The sound reluctantly brought Chris out of her own thoughts and back into the moment.

  “I haven’t decided,” she admitted, glancing quickly at the glass and the task at hand.

  She cast a sideways glance at Raven, watching her bite the corner of her lip. Chris felt her body shudder inwardly, entirely undone in an instant by the subtle sexuality of the movement. Raven cleared her throat, stepping up to the counter to order. Chris had to force herself to make up her mind. Rocky road versus mint chip seemed to be such a trivial decision in light of all that she was feeling, but she nonetheless stepped up and rattled off her order like an obedient child.

  “Mint chip in a waffle cone, please,” she asked, prompting a nod of approval from Raven.

  “Solid choice,” she said, giving a wink as she laid a few dollar bills on the counter. “I would have pegged you for vanilla.”

  “Ouch,” Chris said, her tone light and playful. “You really think I’m that boring?”

  “It wasn’t meant to be an insult,” Raven said, holding up her hands quickly to avert the damage. “Vanilla is actually quite an interesting choice. You just have to see it clearly. It’s not boring. It’s just for people who can find adventure in the ordinary.”

  Chris knitted her brow and looked deeply into Raven’s eyes. After giving it a moment for Raven’s comment to resonate, she said, “I never know what to expect when you open your mouth. Sometimes you’ve got quippy comebacks. And then other times, you eloquently string together deep philosophic thoughts on life.”